A poem a day in April from Rutgers English PhD students and friends.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Blast from the Past

I guess it's facebook, I guess it's
here you put up last Saturday here
I put your childhood in Polaroids;
that's why that face is aged and modern,
a modern person looking old
in modern-looking light and horn-rimmed
glasses that people wear in modern times,
and then one second later warmish light
is making it so young and kissing lips
that look like different lips from picture 1
and then is scrambling up a tree
in darkness that could be from '89
or just a crappy cell phone. The voice
is missing but you recognize the prose
as bad, as usual. The modern voice
would say that bad prose in a normal way;
the old-time voice still crackles in an atmosphere
that crackles too, both in a force-field
not one of us could penetrate
even with lasers! even with teacups
full of wine, the smelly gingko blooming,
L'Education Sentimentale
open on my lap, a stolen orange on hers,
our several old-time voices crackling
so bad you only see the syllables.

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